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USS Maine
The USS Main was one of Americas biggest battleships at the time. They sent it over to Spain and let it sit in the water near there as a way of intimidation. Suddenly in the middle of the night it exploded. Many people think that America used this as a set up on Spain to casing the war. More than 400 people were killed here and America made it look like a giant terrible tragity so they could get the people on their side to start the war. -
Battle of San Huan Hill
The battle of San Huan Hill was one of the most important battled of the Spanish American War. Roosevelts political career spiked because of these battles because in them he and his army charged up the hill and greatly helped win the war. When he returned from this battle he was seen as a celebrity. This battle was so important because it allowed the United States to begin a siege of Santiago de Cuba, which led to Spanish surrender and the end of the Spanish-American War. -
The Progressive Era
The progressive era was a time of social, political, and economic reform. There was new things like big business which lead to child labor and bad working conditions. There was also raid immigration which lead to waves of depressed wages and anti-immigration. Finally there was massive urbanization and that caused there to be the creation of tenement housing, higher disease, and crime. -
Carrie A Nation
Carrie A. Nation was an older women whos husband had died of alcoholism. After this happens she goes to a bar with a hatchet and scares everyone out then smashes the bottles of alcohol. She was arrested for this but immediately an anominus person paid her bail and gave her a new hatchet and an address to a bar they wanted destroyed. This repeated many times where people would use her to destroy a popular bar in their town. This is a big example of the lengths some people would go for prohibition -
The Muckrakers
The muckrakers were a group of journalist that documented a bad thing happening in the world and spread light to it through journalism or photography. They were raking up the bad stuff in the world. Jacob riis was a famous mukraker. He was a photographer and an author and he spread light to the tentmate housing. He took pictures of the terrible living conditions and wrote about them. Ida M. Tarbell was an author who wrote about the corrupt oil companies and exposed the richest man in the world. -
McClure's Magazine
McClure's Magazine was a journalism company where muckrakers could safely publish their work. Before a lot of companies would shut down their work because they were causing trouble or they didn't agree with what they said. This also gave women the opportunity to publish their works without getting discriminated against. The caused much larger amounts of muckraker work to be created and shown to the public. -
Wisconsin Plan
The Wisconsin plan was created when a man named Robert Lafitte was leaving town on a train and the second someone noticed he was a politician they immediately offered him a bribe. This told him he needed to make change fast. The Wisconsin plan did things like introduce the Australian ballot system in. This was where the voters choice and identity was kept secret to prevent persuasion. He also directly elected the senators. This worked out so well that the rest of the country ended up adopting it -
The Jungle
The Jungle was a book written by Uptown Sinclair. He was a muckraker and the purpose of the book was to talk bad of the government and support socialism, but there was a section of the book that talked about the meatpacking industry. It talked about rotten meat, bugs laying eggs in ground beef, and people falling into girders and being mixed in. This was the only part of the book people ended up caring about and it got so big that it led to new laws to keep the meatpacking industry safe. -
New Technology in WWI
WWI was the first ever industrialized war. Many people didn't understand how a lot of these weapons worked and as a result it caused it to be one of the deadliest wars. The machine gun was used to mow people down that were charging through no mans land during trench warfare. There were also toxic gasses thrown into trenches. Then there was submarine warfare that the Germans used a lot to create blockades in oceans. This was what originally got America into the war. -
15th Amendment
The 15th amendment prohibited the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors. The result from this did not end up well. The consumption of alcohol actually went up. It also resulted in a high amount of organized crime, speakeasies, and bootleggers. This is also how nascar first was created. -
19th Amendment
The 19th amendment made it so people could not be denied the right to vote based off of their sex. This meant that women were now able to vote for the first time in history. One thing that got very popular after this happened was prohibition. At the time a lot of women hated alcohol and with their new right to vote they used it to try to get people in office that would support prohibition. -
Anti Immigration
Anti Immigration became a very big thing among the people in the United States during the Roaring 20's. The biggest outright anti immigration thing that happened was the Immigration Act of 1924. This denied all Asians to be allowed to come into America. There was also Emergency Quota Act. This allowed the government to pick and choose who could come into America. It was like a filter that only let the more rich and intelligent people thorough. -
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a time where there was high unemployment and homelessness. Many people think this was because of the consumer culture at the time. A lot of people were buying in credit and causing them to go into debt. Banks were also being irresponsible with investments and when they crashed a lot of people lost their money. People also put all their money into the stock market because they only thought it could go up. When it crashed they had to sell all their stocks for a loss. -
The New Deal
This was FDR's response to the Great Depression. The main thing it did was give the federal government much more power and also created new job agencies. One of the biggest was the works progress association. What it did was it gave two billion in federal funding and gave 8 million jobs. What it did was pull people off the street and give them a construction job. There was also the FDIC who could shut down banks they saw as failing. -
C.O.R.E
Congress of Racial Equality. Was established by john farmer in Chicago Illinois and eventually spread to all of America. This group was created to fight for equality between all people. They were especially good at forming protests, court cases, marches, and other things to shed light on inequality and discrimination -
G.I. Bill of RIghts
This was a way for the government to give thanks back to the veterans from WWII. This paid for their education to a trade school or collage. It also gave them low interest rates on home loans and business loans. This was one reason the suburbs blew up so much because the homes very cheep for them. Another result of the GI Bill was that the middle class expanded to much larger. -
First Dispute of the Cold War
During WWII British and Solvate troops were in Iran helping with a protest about oil. After the war ended and Germany was leaving Iran alone, Britain withdrawal their troops but Russia kept theirs there. Their plan was to try to take some of the oil saying they helped free them from the Germans. This made president Truman very mad and caused him to write to the senate about how he was tired of babysitting the Russians and they needed to do something about it. -
The Yalta Conference
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin made important decisions about the future of the world after WWII. They discussed stuff like what to do with Germany, what to do is japan make a last ditch effort to win the war, and how to rebuild European society. By the end of the conference a group called NATO was formed. They agreed that if a NATO country was attacked all the other NATO countries would defend them. -
The Atomic Bomb
The atomic bomb was created by a group of scientist in Mexico City. Robert Oppenheimer was the lead scientist on the project. Because it would be such a big accomplishment, the code named it the Manhattan Project and kept it very secured. The first successful test was done in the Alamogordo Bombing Range. The bomb was so much bigger than the scientist expected. One named Jean Tatlock committed suicide because she had felt terrible about what she helped create. -
Beginning of the Baby Boom
The baby boom was when huge amounts of children were born. This could have been because when the veterans came home from the war, they had babies. Every ten seconds there was a baby born. Over the whole baby boom there was 70 million babies born. During the baby boom the population was growing by one percent. In present day the population is growing by 0.09 percent. -
Iron Curtin Speech
This speech was given by British prime minister Winston Churchill in Fulton, Missouri. He stressed the necessity for the United States and Britain to act as the guardians of peace and stability for the Europeans against soviate Russia. He said them and Britain needed to make a special relationship or a "Iron Cutan" to be able to fight soviate Russia. -
Truman Doctorate
This was a plan put in place to help out post war Europe. He believed that if the Europeans didn't need to rely on Russia to rebuild them after the war they would not fall for communisum. He asked for $400 million in federal aid, troops, and advisors to help Greece and turkey during their communist revolt. $400 million back then would have been equal to 3.2 billion in 2002 so you can see how serious America was about fighting communisum. -
The Marshal Plan
The Marshal Plan was created by U. S. secretary George Marshal. It was a plan created in order to restore Europe after WWII. He thought America should have a big part of this because it was indirectly fighting the spread of communism. They modernized their equipment, they expanded their trades and exports, they removed some trade restrictions, and they rebuilt their cities. They tried to do this for the communist countries but they were not allowed to because it would show how weak communism was -
Division of Germany
After WWII Germany was split up into sections and owned by different countries. There was a USSR, French, British, and American zone. Inside of the communist part there was the very historic city of Berlin. They kept it free because it was so special to Germany. Stalin hated it there so he created a Blockade to prevent recourses from coming into the city. If they sufferer for long enough they would have to turn to the satiate union in order to not starve to death. -
Brown V Board of Education
This was a supreme court case that argued that schools should not be segregated. It was argued by Thorogood Marshal. He used children's experiences with the segregated schools to help win over the judges. He talked about how this young girl had to walk past three white only schools that were near her house to be able to make it to the segregated school. This was eventually won over to Thorogood but it still caused huge uproar in the public. -
Vietnam War
Vietnam was never actually a war because congress never declared war. This was another place where America was trying to contain communism. America saw that communist leaders were rising up in south Vietnam so they went there to try to control it and push communist away. The war was dragged on for decades and anti war protests started. America pulled their troops from Vietnam and Saigon immediately fell to communism. This was seen as a failed attempt to contain communism but a win for anti war. -
Montgomery Bus Boycotts
Was staged where they put Rosa Parks on a bus and got arrested. They told her to not get angry or resist so that it can not be turned against them. They chose her because she was a small old black woman and it would make them look very bad arresting her. This got a lot of the back community angry and they started to not ride the bus. This caused their profits to fall dramatically and had the company begging for the government to remove segregation on public transport. -
The Eisenhower Interstate Highway Act
The Eisenhower Interstate Highway Act was the largest public works project ever done in America at the time. It had to be started in many different parts of the country all at the same time. To convince people to do this he used red scare tactics. He said they would be great routs for mass evacuation to cities in case of an emergency. He also made them into emergency run ways. For every ten miles one mile had to be perfectly straight and perfectly level. -
The Little Rock Arkansas
A local black empowerment group went door to door in their city looking for black students to join a group. The purpose of this group was to all go to a white school. They got nine students to join this group. When the kids got to the school there was military, parents, students, and teachers surrounded to prevent them from going. Eventually the president ordered special forces to help escort them though the school. This showed that people did not care about the law and had not changed. -
SNCC
The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. This group was created by Ella Baker. At the time a lot of kids were not allowed to protest because their parents were afraid they would get attacked or killed. When this group formed their purpose was to find ways to give kids the opportunity to protest without being violent or getting hurt. Sadly a lot of the kids did not have the patience and faded away from the movement. -
Lunch Counter Sit in
A group of collage students decided to stop somewhere to grab lunch. The place they chose was a lunch counter in a shopping center. They were asked to leave because it was a white only lunch counter. They refused and were nicely asking to be served. Eventually crowds formed around them and they were yelling at them. After the place closed they left and and came back the next day. This reached national news and soon other people across America started to do this same thing. -
Election of 1960
This was a big election because it was the first election that was on tv. It was Kennedy vs Nixon debating. Kennedy decided to let them put the special makeup on him while Nixon thought it was stupid. As a result the bright lights made Nixon look pale and sick. Kennedy also looked into the camera while Nixon looked at Kennedy. Even though Kennedy had defiantly lost the debate, he looked much better on the tv and that's where most people saw the debate and as a result they thought he won. -
Ruby Bridges
This is the fist black girl to attend an all white elementary school. She had to be protected by armend us marshals ordered by the president. Every day she would walk to school as parents, students, and teachers yelled, protested, and threw things at her. This showed that people did not care who the person was, if they were black they did not want them in an all white school. -
Cuban Missile Crisis
After Cuba fell to communism, Americans feared that they were going to get bombed because Cuba was in range to launch missiles while other communist countries before were not able to. There was a failed invasion to get communism out called Bay of Pigs Invasion. Then there was naval blockade to stop nuclear supplies from coming in. It escalated to bad that America went into defon 2. Thankfully there was a compromise made. America removed missiles from turkey, and Russia removed theirs from Cuba -
Dr. King Junior Jailed
During a protesting in Birmingham, Alabama Martin Luther King Jr. is arrested. The court argued that it was illegal to hold protests in that area even though that was defiantly not true. In jail he writes "Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” It says that people have a moral responsibility to break unjust laws, and to take direct action rather than waiting potentially forever for justice to come through the courts. This inspires millions of people to go out and protest for him. -
Feminisms Movement
Most people believe this movement began when Betty Friedan published the book "The Feminine Mosque." This book became very popular and inspired many women to want more equal rights. One of the best things to come out of this movement was the equal pay act(1963). This prohibited sex-based wage discrimination between men and women in the same establishment who perform jobs that require substantially equal skill, effort and responsibility. -
March on Washington
This was created by the SCLC. They said that they wanted to have a march on Washington and they wanted to make it huge. They contacted other organizations like the NAACP, SNCC, & CORE. They all worked together to bus people to Washington from all over the country. More than 400,000 people were able to get there. They also got protection from the military and police. This is where marten Luther king. Jr gave his famous "I have a Dream" Speech. -
JFK Assasination
This was an event that nobody during this time period expected to happen. It shocked Americans all across the nation. It happened when he was on a ride in a motorcade though the Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas. He was rushed to the hospital and pronounced dead at 1pm. At 2:39pm his vice president Mr. Johnson was sworn in as the new president. -
The Great Society
The great society program was created by president Lyndon Johnson. The purpose of it was to improve the lives of all Americans permanently. It helped in ending poverty, reducing crime, abolishing inequality and improving the environment. Many people were very happy with this. This caused Johnson to be seen as one of the better presidents to America. -
Civil Rights Act
This was sighed into law by president Johnson. It stated that there could be no discrimination of, color, race, religion, or national origin of any kind. This mean that there could no longer be a white only, bathroom, hospital, hotel, water fountains, or anything else. They could all use the same things. This was a massive win to all black people and people fighting for civil rights. -
Johnsons Great Society
This was a pan made by president Lyndon Bains Johnson. The idea was to extend the roll of the federal government. The First thing it did was try to eliminate poverty. He believed that no poverty would boost the economy and make a stronger workforce. He also created Medicare and Medicate which gave low cost healthcare to poor and elderly. He also Created the secondary and primary school act which helped fund textbooks, scholarships, special education programs, and preschools. -
Voting Rights Act of 1965
This was a law signed in by president Johnson once again. This outlawed the discriminatory voting practices adopted in many southern states after the Civil War, including literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting. This was another missive win for the black community and other people fighting for the cause because now they were able to vote on top of not be segregated. -
Selma to Montgomery
This was a protest formed because black people didn't have voting rights. The first time they attempt this march there are 600 people. All of them get beaten and some were killed, this was known as Bloody Sunday. Then there was a second attempt with 2,00 marchers. They get sent back but they are not beaten and killed. Then there is a third attempt. This time there is 25,000 marchers and they are protected by military. They were able to march all the way into the capital. -
The Stonewall Riots
Stonewall was a gay bar located in New York City. One day there was a police raid on it. The situation escalated and the police lost control so it turned into a riot. After this had happened it made national news. More people started to protest for gay rights and it eventually hit newspapers. On June 28 1969, the first gay rights march happened in Chicago Illinois. -
Economic Crisis of the 70's
One of the biggest things the 70's is known for is being a time of suffering from a bad economy. This was caused from the gradual decline in manufacturing. This is because before this time America spent more time improving other countries manufacturing like in japan and twain instead of their own. After they had done this they lost some trade in these areas because people were buying from the more developed Asian manufacturers. -
Enviormental Movment
This was a series of cats passed by Nixon as a result for a big push in a clean planet. There was things like the clean air and water act which prevented pollutants from being allowed in public bodies of water and also regulated the amount of thing that could be replaced into the air. Then there was the endanger species act which prohibited the import, export, or taking of fish and wildlife and plants that are listed as threatened or endangered species -
Watergate
Watergate was an event that happened during the precedency of Richard Nixon. What happened what that people that worked for the president were collecting information though telephone bugging devices at the democratic headquarters. This was to help him secure his reelection. It was not his idea but once Nixon found out about it he did his best to cover it up. After people found out he was shunned and decided to resign because he knew he had so shot at reelection. -
Oil Shocks
Many middle eastern Arab states decided to suspend their export of oil to America. This was because America refused to give Israel supplies during a war happening there. As a result the cost of oil quadrupled overnight. This resulted in long lines for gas, high oil prices, and American buying smaller more fuel efferent cars like Japanese cars. Prices for everything ese also went up because oil was used in the production of all of them in some way or another. -
The WIN Campaign
This was a thing that president ford created as a way to try to fight the rising inflation. Win standed for Whip Inflation Now. All it really did was ask Americans to try to save their money and also told them to prioritize a disciplined spending habit. Many people see this as a failure. Inflation did drop a little but it didn't really do anything for permanent change sense it just asked people to spend less money. -
Stagflation
Stagflation was a term created in the mid 1970's to describe the state of the economy at the time. It was a combination of unemployment and high inflation. at the begging of the decade stagflation was at 10.8 and by the end of the decade it had doubled. There were many presidents at the time like Nixon and ford who tried to fight this stagflation but ultimately failed. -
Three Mile Island Accident
Around this time the president was investing in more sources of energy outside of oil. One of these was nuclear power. One day radioactive water vapor got released into the air. This caused tons of people to panic. It also created a lot of anti nuclear energy movement. This is what a lot of people remember jimmy carter from in relation to his energy initiatives. In conclusion this boosted peoples idea that Jimmy Cater was a failed president. -
Iranian Hostage Crisis
Iranian militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran and took approximately seventy Americans captive. This was probably the worst crisis during Jimmy Carters presidency. It lasted for 444 days. He was able to get 16 of the hostages returned but many more were never seen again. This enforced the idea into people that jimmy carter was a failed president.
